showeredwithgrace

 

Tonight it begins ~ our Advent season.  I love this advent calendar.  It's not ours and it's not in the budget ~ but how nice if it were!  I stumbled across it at Willow Tree Toys.

Scenes from a Thanksgiving . . .

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

   

 

 

Hope yours was happy!

  Happy Thanksgiving!

New additions to our nature table.

 

Clove studded clementine and a little grated nutmeg.

 

I set up her new 'late fall' nature table when she was supposed to be taking her nap.  Of course she came down (without napping) right when I was lighting the candle ~ which delighted her.  She particularly enjoys rubbing the cinnamon sticks together and smelling them.  I think I'll put out a whole nutmeg and grater too.   Also clementines studded with clove ~ she'll love that!

It's almost that time again . . . are you ready?!

This book is worth a read.  Lifting out the importance of trees to all creatures and the Earth as a home we share with all creation.  'Once There Was a Tree' by Natalia Romanova.

We were back to our Botanical Garden.  Our subject of interest this time was trees.

 

In particular, the Cottonwood tree.  Found only by the water here in our desert.  The kids enjoyed laying on a blanket and listening to the wind blowing through the Cottonwood trees.  They also had an opportunity to touch pots of dry soil and moist soil to discover the difference. 

We spied some of our native trees showing a bit of autumn gold as well.  This tree below is a Mesquite tree.  Our Palo Verde trees and our Ocotillo were also sporting gold.

The children were sent on a quest to match leaves they were given to leaves of trees in the Garden.

Snack was of course an edible tree!

We made leaf rubbings . . .

Log rings . . .

And fun leaf-glitter trees with paint, eyedroppers, straws, and crushed leaves.

We also saw an adorable puppet show and had many 'tree' books to look through in our book nook.

This book was great! I'll be looking to pick up a copy at the library and will definitely be on the search for more Claire Llewellyn books.

And in conclusion, I'll leave you with this picture of one of the beautiful glass art sculptures now in place in our Botanical Garden.

 

She thinks she's the cat's meow ~ and I think I need to move my make-up a little higher up!  But all in the pursuit of knowledge!  Cats are mammals too.

Hope you're having a fantastic day!

I'm curiously in love with giraffes right now. 

. . . and so he reveals Himself ~ ever so gently . . . silently . . .  in the hushed moments of a day as Light and Life . . . three but one. 

yes Lord, I'm listening.

Rose Red:  "This is my father ~ he lives in mass." 

Mommy:  "Yes.  Yes, he does my love."

Rose Red:  "I love my Shepherd"

Mommy:  "And he loves you, very much"

This blog should really be named 'Discovering Together' because I am continually discovering new things right along with Rose Red!

I've been wishing this Fall season that we had oak trees here in the Sonoran Desert since there are so many great activities and crafts for childern using acorns.  Besides, they seemed much more fun to collect than our variety of desert seeds and pods.  Living in the desert we grow up without many of the charming memories of childhood that one finds in all the children's books such as gathering acorns, jumping in piles of brightly colored leaves, first snow falls, making snowmen, etc., etc..    So you can imagine my delight when Rose Red ran up to me in the park the other day with a fist full of tiny acorns!  Whereever were they from?!  From the trees planted all around the playground it seems.  Now who knew we could grow Southern Live Oak trees in the desert?!

Now these acorns are tiny at best and I'm not sure if they ever get any bigger but they are still acorns nonetheless!  Here is a close up of one of the fallen leaves.

And here is a traditional game I bet you remember playing as a child!

   

Happy November!

Over here it is all about mammals.

I am loving these giraffes!  New to our mammal collection.  The mother giraffe actually has mammary glands.

On our most recent trip out and about to our Desert Botanical Garden we were introduced to our local Pinacate Beetle  ~ known also as the 'stink bug' and 'clown of the beetle world' for it's funny way of standing on his head when threatened and emitting a stinky spray from it's rear.  This beetle stays active in cooler weather because of their black bodies which act as a solar collector, absorbing 25% more solar radiation than white beetles, warming them on cold days.  Pretty interesting stuff!

   

 

The snack above was a mini bagel (cut side down) with cream cheese, blueberries and a grape for the head and black licorice for the antennae ~ very cute.

My favorite part of the day was when the 'Pinacate Beetle' sock puppet read us a poem about himself ~ chock full of lots of fun facts!  Here he is . . .

She took him off her hand for this part of the show where she was demonstrating how the mice held the Pinacate when they wanted to eat one up.  Rear down so they wouldn't encounter his stinky spray and then eating just the head and thorax of the beetle, leaving the abdomen behind.  Pretty smart mice, don't you think?

A beetle booklist:

Beetle Bop by Denise Fleming

Beetle Boy by Lawrence David

The Boll Weevil Ball by Kelly Murphy

The Buggliest Bug by Carol Diggory Shields

The Very Clumsy Click Beetle by Eric Carle

The Beetle Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta

Bugs are Insects by Anne Rockwell

Bugs, Beetles, and Butterflies by Harriet Ziefert

The Beautiful Beetle Book by Sue Unstead

Beetles: The Most Common Insects by Sara Swan Miller

Mr. Beetle by Satoshi Tada

Bettle Bedlam by Vlasta Van Kampen

We had breakfast with the Giraffes this morning at the zoo.  Gorgeous creatures.  We learned many interesting things about these graceful animals too.  The most exciting part was being invited to their barn to feed them carrots (through the gate).   The experience of coming so close to them within close quarters was breathtaking ~ everyone including the wee ones were in silent awe.

Giant floor puzzle ~ we discovered that each giraffe has unique spots just as we have unique fingerprints! 

Pretending to be zoo keeper ( I think the leaves were actually supposed to be the stuff in the bucket).  Did you know that giraffes are the tallest mammal?

Creating texture rubbings.

Creating a habitat mural (grassy savannah).

We discovered that giraffes gather their food with their long sticky tongues (18 inches long!) ~ and that their tongues are purple!

The purple color helps protect their tongue from sunburn while gathering leaves from the tall acacia tree tops.  Rose Red's favorite activity was creating a purple tongue for herself with dry purple jello and then looking at herself in the mirror.

Our breakfasts at the zoo have been great!  So far we have come to know our reptile and amphibian friends and now we'll be moving on to mammals.  Picking up where our zoo lets off and running with it ~ through books and stories and toys and jokes and songs. 

We planted radish seeds last Friday when we were at our Desert Botanical Gardens.  The very next day they began sprouting!  A week later this is what they look like. 

My friends, these are amphibians ~ frogs and tadpoles.  She is quite sure about it and taped this important work on the refrigerator.

Life has been less than quiet here at Quiet Hollow.  Finding a moment or a thought to blog a post has been hard to come by!  We are having a great time with many exciting things.  We've finally begun our fall Botanical Garden class which is wonderful.  Our first week looked at the Monarch butterfly through stories, crafts, snack, and wonderful activity centers.  Best of all though was the trip to the butterfly pavillion!

peering through a magnifying glass

This week's class was all about seeds.  This was great fun as our nature walks have been all about seeds (and animal homes) lately.  We planted seeds, discovered seeds and their plants throughout the garden, snacked on seeds (this was lots of fun! skewered fruit and veggies all filled with seeds ~ cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, kiwi, strawberries, etc., etc.).  There were books and learning centers and storytime with the feltboard.

We continue on with our monthly breakfast at the zoo with the animals.  Last month we visited the amphibians and learned about our frog friends and saw many different types of frogs, toads, some salamanders and newts!

Our nature walks continue but the camera never seems to make it with us for one reason or another but we have been discovering many animal homes and seeds, seeds, seeds and coming to know our desert foilage a bit.  We are very aware of fall this year and notice signs of it everywhere (even in our desert climate!).

After our Big Red Hen study we tried to move onto something else but Rose Red keeps pulling us into Cinderella instead (which she is passionate about just as she was with the Little Red Hen).  I'm following her lead instead ~ but sticking to my guns about avoiding the Disney~fied Cinderella and reading her an older version of the story where we can pick up on the virtues Cinderella exhibits of kindness, humility, gentleness and forgiveness.  All of which are in sore need over here ~ so perhaps we have been properly lead!

Our alphabet studies continue but not with any true enthusiasm due to mommy's distractions.  We have an alphabet shelf which we keep the weekly (or so) letter (tactile letter, letter puzzle, picture books of  the alphabet; Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Waldorf.   I have yet to incorporate our chalk letters (for walking the shape of each letter) or some of the other things I had in mind ~ but soon, soon, soon.

There is more we are doing ~ patterning, counting, music, etc. as our whims dictate ~ and of course we are reading, reading, reading.  The library is our great friend.  Nature and the seasons, our animal friends, counting, and more are all coming alive for us through our books!

Back to mommy's distractions ~ we are moving again!  This time we purchased a home of our own.  We hope to move in by Thanksgiving.  My dh's company just had their grand opening this past week so he has been busier than ever even into the evenings and weekends lately.  Between revonating the new house and getting his company up and running and boy scouts with our nephew and bible study at the church the poor guy has not come up for air in several months.  Oh ~ and his father has moved in with us as of September (I think temporarily).  He is sleeping in the loft.  All fun and crazy stuff.

Hope all is well with all of you!